I don’t know if the military operations in Libya is a good idea or not. But in favor or against, I wish the conventional wisdom would give up on the mania over “mission objectives” or “end game.” This is offered up as serious critique of Obama’s decision to start a new war. We either see this as a concern or criticism from politicians, or embedded in news articles without any attribution which reinforces the sense that it is an unquestionably valid point.

Here is my objection: wars are messy, complex events. The mania over a defined mission is some sort of collective learned response to Viet Nam. That war is commonly seen as a mistake because it went on too long and their was mission drift from supporting the South Vietnamese government (which we either directly or indirectly installed. Sorry, no time to make myself a SE Asia expert this morning). Hence, since then, Presidents, congressional leaders, and paid pundits want every conflict or war defined in terms of “mission objectives” and “end games.” As if this is a board game or a shopping list with discrete boxes we can tick off and then “go home.”

Here are some US-led or US-involved military missions that I would like to know what the “mission objectives” are which, once we ding the bell and get the gold star, we can imagine withdrawing and no longer being involved.

Military/Intelligence Drone operations in Yemen, Pakistan and who knows where else?

My point? As Tolstoy described it in War and Peace, and I am paraphrasing, war is only clear when seen from the lofty armchair of those not involved. On the ground it is fog, murk, rattle, and crash. It is a foolish to act as if there are clean and discrete wars on the one hand and murky, protracted ones with unknowable, uncertain outcomes down the road. They are all murky, liable to be long, and chock full of uncertainty.

I wish our public conversation could start at that point instead of the public relations blitz that this war is going to be different. Maybe, maybe, we could then have a more honest conversation about what our gold and blood are paying for.